


Blood on My Name

by clandestineClairvoyant



Series: Blood On My Name [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Depression, Gen, M/M, Seeker!carver, Suicidal Thoughts, Templar Carver Hawke, and Cole will probably feature largely, in the background tho THAT work is coming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 23:46:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6134215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clandestineClairvoyant/pseuds/clandestineClairvoyant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders expected to be caught eventually.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> The fact that it was <i>Tevinters</i> was unexpected. But the outcome was all the same.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> Edited 5/17/2016 :P</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood on My Name

**Author's Note:**

> What's Anders up to in Inquisition.
> 
> In my playthrough I had male!mage!blue!hawke, romanced Anders, killed him at the end of DA2 because I live for tragedy, and Carver was a Templar.
> 
> In this verse, Anders lived, and it was female!blue!mage!Hawke. 
> 
> You don't have to have read the previous work, but just know Carver Hawke heard news from where he was Templaring it up in Kirkwall doing recovery efforts of his sister's death, and came to the Inquisition to either kill the Inquisitor responsible or die trying.  
> Cullen talked him down, and now he's been in Skyfall for perhaps two months. There's a story in the middle I want to write, but it will come later.

Anders expected to be caught eventually.

The fact that it was Tevinters was unexpected. But the outcome was all the same. The Venatori’s dungeons weren’t even the worst he’d been kept in, as awful as it was to admit as he languished.

The pallet was thin, but dry. The bugs were simply the ones that could get in through the small fist sized drain in the corner, rather than the ones that nested in the festering corpses and piles of refuse some dungeons had. The darkspawns, most notably; And for a few memorable weeks the Templar’s in Lothering.

Why they never sent some shiny-faced recruit down there to clean more often, Anders never found out. They barely kept him for a fortnight.

The corner with the drain was crusted, flaking, and stinking only so much as a hole that got rinsed once a month could- But at least it drained.

He’d been in worse, he kept reminding himself. Far worse. This was barely an imprisonment, compared to the year of solitary confinement. Or the Deep Roads.

In fact, a little time to himself

_(-THE TEMPLARS ARE FREE UNLEASHED YOU MUST TAKE ADVANTAGE CRUSH THEM-)_

was just what the doctor ordered.

The fact that he couldn’t sleep, without jerking awake into what amounted to even more waking nightmares, didn’t worry him nearly as much as the lies he told himself while staring at the roughly hewn rock wall. The ones he knew weren’t true, but couldn’t stop repeating to himself when the candle ran out.

Lies, such as ’This is fine. I am safe.'

There were breaks in the monotony. The sterile blankness of the wall was broken occasionally by a glyph, or the faint remnants of scratching hands. Water soaked into the seat of his trousers; into his socks, patched and darned into lumpy foot mittens. The rumble under his feet startled him awake, as the blood mages no doubt flubbed another spell. ( Similar to the Circle, he thought, in those brief moments before waking completely.)

 

His eyes would drift shut and he would forget, for a moment. The darkness was a cool balm to his itching and dry eyes; But as soon as it started to soothe him into sleep, any number of nightmarish fantasies would take hold.

 

He’s in solitary again. He never left. He’s in Darktown and the Templar’s are coming for him, he’s been buried alive-

Justice has taken over completely, and he’s simply a floating mind behind the eyes of a cerulean maniac-

Hawke, her blue eyes blank and staring behind a film of green Fade energy-

 

Anders jerked awake countless times, the Fade tantalizingly out of reach with the steady dose of magebane given to him in his meagre water rations, as well as the wards. The only things he dreamed of were from his own mind, and he’d rather stay awake, thank you.

The cell was small. Six feet by eight perhaps, deeper from the door than wide. If he stretched, he could almost brush both sides of his cell with his fingertips- Although why he would want to subject himself to twice as much rough, damp stone, marked with the bloody fingernails and utensils of prisoners centuries past, he didn’t know. It was simply a way to pass the time- measuring the leash of his existence.

He kept his hands to himself, and simply sat with his knees drawn up against the ratty and tattered front of his long coat for warmth, staring unfeelingly at the wall.

Justice raged against the confines of his head, battering an electric blue rhythm behind his eyes; but to his combined hysterical relief and disappointment, the spirit was only easier to contain as he declined in health. His hungry stomach, damp stone, and stinging singing wards did what a Templars silence couldn’t.

His body just wasn’t the vessel it used to be.

 

#####

 

They’d captured him at the crossroads. Practically in the seat of Inquisitorial power, and it had been Tevinters.

There was no justification he could tell himself, after the sky erupted into an emerald gape visible from every corner of Thedas, to keep away from the masses of injured and dying people all fleeing the fighting between Templars and Mages. The fighting that Justice had _(that he had)_ caused.

 

Kirkwall had only been the tip of the iceberg.

 

Anders could spend a week in one run-down and overcrowded town- sleeping on the ground behind the inn, waking to more thronging masses- and work until he was seeing nothing but spots and hearing a high pitched whining in his ear.

At the end of the week, he would barely have saved anyone at all. Have barely scratched the surface. He gained nothing. Nothing but a thin chest heaving under his hands, the pulse of a heart stuttering as he came up short, ran dry of mana, couldn’t do _enough._

They would die, right there under his hands at the crossroads. And he did it again. And again. And as many times as it took, so Justice could feel what he’d done, what _they’d_ done; the life leaving a body and rendering it cold and as stiff as placing your hand on a slab of meat.

 

And then he would simply move on to the next. Because each patient was another chance to prove he wasn’t a monster, that he’d done the right thing. That he was worth saving, even if he didn’t think he’d ever believe it for himself.

 

If he’d thought he could get away with it, if Justice were less vigilant, if there was someone out there more capable than coddled Circle mages throwing off their fetters for the first time and burning down the whole bloody forest, he’d consider seeking out death. It wouldn’t be hard. Perhaps an errant Templar- if he wasn’t such a damned and twice blighted coward.

 

There was just too much to do, too many dying, too many injured. And Justice would never let him, not without a fight.

Anders was almost certain it was because in some small way, the spirit still loved him.  
So he fought down the sick feeling in his stomach, and continued with his thankless work.

 

He didn’t regret the war. It had to happen. So much of what happened to him, and what happened to others could never happen again.

 

Every time he doubted himself he’d think of the young apprentices, ten or twelve or even younger, looking up to the Templars or to the other Enchanters, still too small for their robes and dragging a sullen expression and a secondhand staff.

_Half_ of what happened to him happening to one of them would break him.

And if what it took was the destruction of an institution hundreds of years old, and the death of perhaps a hundred people, then so be it. He’d even been willing to sacrifice himself. Justice. The whole Maker-damned city.

(What he hadn’t been ready to sacrifice, what he hadn’t even dreamed, was that he’d sacrifice Marian. That had hurt more than any death, any title, any wanted poster bearing his face or spit on the ground at his feet.)

Eventually, he stopped caring about being seen, stopped caring about being captured. Justice grew weak, less vigilant about the smaller things, somewhere between Kirkwall and the Crossroads.

He stopped caring about dying. Justice couldn’t control him completely any longer; beyond the fits of rage that cracked him in half with cerulean when he attempted to swallow something to end it, to take one step too far off the end of a dock or a high ledge.

 

So his hand had been forced into helping. Anders wasn’t even allowed the cowards way out.

 

#####

 

Two weeks it had taken to clear the roads leading to and from the crossroads from bandits, playing a merry game of keepaway through the thick forest with both Inquisition soldiers and rebels alike.

He’d felt like some fey will-o-the-wisp; a blue light that led them on into the forest and through maze-like cliffs. He either left them stranded and befuddled- Or a smoldering smear on the browned and dying grass. According to who it was, and how strong he was feeling that day.

With safer passage the refugees could come with greater regularity. Which he saw as soon as he managed to find his own way back. They’d been buried in humanity. They’d drawn the blood and life from him like leeches, working him to the literal bone, fingers bleeding, and he’d welcomed it with open arms.

The sickness had only grown worse though, as supplies had grown short.

Everyone had gone hungry. The chantry sisters, who tried to fill starving mouths; the few apostate mages who were tolerated simply for the sheer fact of necessity, Anders himself included; There were mothers and fathers who went hungry simply to fill their children's mouths. Those who were still together as families.

When someone died, the sorrow was tempered by the relief of one less hungry belly to fill. People weren’t even allowed to _grieve._

He should have known it couldn’t last. Everyone was hungry, desperate. Even the promise of a healing, and the goodwill of one ragged and tired man, wasn’t enough to keep someone from collecting a reward in gold. Not when the person they turned in was the bastard who killed Elthina.

 

No one had lifted a finger to stop it. He hadn’t been able to meet a single eye on his way out of the city, being dragged in chains by paid mercenaries.

 

And not for lack of trying.

 

#####

 

In the hall of the cell block, water dripped somewhere.

 

It wasn’t in his cell however. Just another way Anders knew to tell time. The burning down of the torches, guttering and flickering into almost darkness that had his heart thumping and throat clicking drily until someone came to change them- told him the passing of the days.

The dripping was the minutes.

The state of his beard and the raggedness of his bitten down nails, almost bloody at the quick, told him it had probably been a week and five watery meals since he’d been thrown down here.

Mages had come and gone to look at him, but the first attempt they’d made at some sort of blood ritual had sent Justice blaring out like a wildfire; A bright blue rage that had smashed the Tevinter with the knife so hard into the wall, Anders fancied he could still read the expression of shock on his face in the impression left on the stone.

It had taken three dispels to quell his fury, and it had left Anders coughing brokenly and bloodily against his thin pallet, collapsed like a heap of discarded rags and bones, cold to his core as the cell door hurriedly clanged shut.

They’d taken the mage with them, limp and lifeless.

It was only a matter of time until they attempted something more creative- such as starving him out, or perhaps binding Anders himself with Justice still smoldering behind his eyes- and the thought of being trapped like this forever would have brought him to his knees if he wasn’t already as far as he could go.

 

The torch flickered briefly, and like lightning his eyes darted to it, red-rimmed and tired as they were, his arms and shoulders entirely unmoving but for a tension that made them tremble faintly.  
The flickering subsided, and the torch returned to its normal, steady light.

Thank the Maker. If he was left in the dark, he thought it might kill him.

_’Someone will come to change it.’_ Anders told himself with uncharacteristic energy, firmly. A small tendril of doubt went through his mind, wondering why they would bother. He ignored it.

It was probably just Justice.

There was no reason for them to keep a light lit- although for some reason that was exactly what they were doing.

No guard was required. There were anti-spell wards written on every inch of the place; scrawled across the bars, and etched so fine and tiny that it rendered the iron as textured as a fingerprint. The stone of the floor and ceiling had so many runes and spells it made him dizzy with the sucking void of it, and Justice was nothing but a faint whisper.

(Until they tried to draw his blood. Then he _roared._ )

If the runes didn’t also make him ill, and outrageously laden with nightmares, he might have been grateful for the silence. He could have done a better job of it of course, given two weeks and some time to experiment. But considering they’d simply been drugging him out of his mind the first two days, this was an excellent last minute job.  
And better than magebane.

 

Although.

 

The removal of his magic made him vulnerable, and his fight against demons every time his eyes drooped shut for longer than a few minutes made him wakeful and drawn, shaking with exhaustion.

Things crept in the corner of his vision, in the dark corners of the cell and up the drain, and he wasn’t sure if it was demons, or sleep deprivation causing it. All he knew was that if that torch went out, he was sure he would start screaming and not stop- Until it either killed him, or something else did.

 

The torch flickered again.

 

In the distance, there was a noise. Faint at first but growing louder.

Enough so that he was comfortable labeling it as real, and not simply a figment of his imagination brought out by the ringing silence and intermittent drips of water on a puddle somewhere in the dark.

The rattle of metal, and voices raised.

At first Anders thought it was someone unlocking the door, but that couldn’t be right. It was too muffled, too distant; And too loud to simply be keys in a lock. Long years of keen listening and familiarity told him this was the sound of swords on sword. Violence.

He unconcernedly kept staring at the wall, his gaze only interrupted by occasional flickers toward the failing light, his heart beating quicker the dimmer the flame became.

Eventually, the sounds grew closer. Someone screamed on the other side, and there was a heavy thump as a blade met contact with the heavy wrought iron oak of the door. The gurgle and the louder sound of dripping told him it was only met through someone’s innards.

After that it was almost silent. Nothing but murmuring.

Eventually, and much to his relief, the dungeon door finally opened, warm lantern light spilling in and replacing the final weak and watery efforts of the lone torch.

It wasn’t the Venatori on the other side of the door, and despite the fact that Anders would never have expected something like this to happen, he couldn’t bring himself to be surprised. Simply resigned.

_’Praise the Maker.’_ Anders thought serenely, if slightly bitterly, as he lifted his head up and peered through the bedraggled and oily curtain of his hair, eyes flinching against the light.

Soldiers filed in, blood splattered across their weapons and armor and eyes wide in recognition, even past the beard and the thinness of starvation. The eye of the Maker glared from their chests, accusing, and Anders met it with nothing more than a tongue licking across cracked lips, and a slight tilt of his head.

_’It’s the Inquisition come to save me.’_

 

#####

 

The hall up to the Inquisitor’s throne was long.

 

Anders wasn’t sure he was going to make it. After the long hard ride, half dragged behind the soldiers horses until he couldn’t walk more than he could be slid, he wasn’t sure his feet could carry him. The soles of his shoes had been worn before the hike, and now they were nothing more than a memory of leather, slick with blood.

There’d been faint, disapproving looks from some of the soldiers, the scouts most noticeably. But no one seemed to care enough to interfere.

It was no point at all when they finally arrived at the Keep, since he was picked up and carried by either arm, feet trailing uselessly.

 

The hall was silent, faces lining the path like statues, expressionless and unsympathetic. He didn’t feel sorrow. If he had his way, he’d be among them, the disappointment and anger at himself enough where he only hoped that the Inquisitor had some way to make it quick.

It was a mercy he wasn’t sure he could even ask for.

There was a small part of him, very small, that thought it would be for the better perhaps. If he were martyred.

Every time he got at his lowest, he thought of those young mages fighting for their lives out in the forest rather than dying a slow quiet death in captivity, his heart (and Justice) sang. The Orlesian towers couldn’t hold them, not any longer. The chantry couldn’t hold them, and when he died he hoped that nothing would hold him either.

 

At the end of the long walk, he looked up at the Inquisitor with tired eyes and a senseless heart.

 

Despite being almost lost in the depths of her throne, small boned and delicate as the finest Orlesian doll, her gaze was that of a warlord. Sharp, and inquisitive, heavy with promise.

He wasn’t not sure he’d ever seen a face with vallaslin look so severe, eyebrows cinched and mouth a thin line. She looked beautiful. They hadn't mentioned that, at the crossroads.

 

(A brief memory of Merrill caused a flutter of regret. Remembering her delicate painted face, the time they’d gone to some Hightown party and she’d been so enchanted with the music and fine clothing that she’d talked of nothing but that for weeks. She’d danced with him, and in a brief moment of weakness for something so small and pretty, he’d let her stand on his feet and made Hawke laugh.)

 

Anders pushed it away.

He had plenty of time to observe the blood red tint of the Inquisitor’s hair and vallaslin, the clear cutting green of her eyes, the black under one eye where she’d been hit and the crooked tilt to her nose that no amount of healing would be enough to straighten entirely.

The templars took their time chaining him to the ring in the floor, directly in front of the throne. He supposed he was lucky they weren’t stocks.

“Thank you.” The Inquisitor said shortly, when they reached the open end of the aisle, and with a brisk dismissing motion of her hand, the soldiers let him go and backed away. Brave then, too.

Anders slumped under the weight of the chains dragging his arms down, still numb and unfeeling, the biting on his wrists drawing circles of bruises over the bone and skin. He hadn’t felt much of anything beyond resigned acknowledgement since he started boring his gaze into the cell wall, and even now, he couldn’t muster up enough energy to be afraid of the elf before him.

Satisfaction perhaps. An odd, fierce itch that had finally been scratched for this very scene.

“Anders.” Her arms weren’t long enough to bridge the gap between the arms of her throne and meet under her chin, and in place she simply grasped either edge, nails painted crimson and standing starkly against the dark iron of the floral design. “I trust I have no need to list your crimes.”

He stayed silent. He wasn’t sure his mouth would work anyway, as dry and parched as it was. He didn’t have any mercy from the soldiers who had captured him, and the only water he’d had was simply what was required to keep him alive for judgement. Again, mostly from the scouts. His speech was a parched, dusty memory.

“The death of ten chantry sisters,” She began anyway, with the same easy measured cadence one would relay the weather. Anders could mouth along with the words, if he wished. It was nothing he hadn't heard before. “Sixteen Kirkwall citizens, twenty one servants, Grand Cleric Elthina, Chancellor Henry, Chancellor Augustine, Chancellor Maureen, Sister Ingrid, Sister Mordred, Brother Eames, Brother Marrot, Sister Isolde, and fourteen others injured, who were recovered from the remains of the chantry.”

She paused, and the silence was so absolute that he was sure those in the back of the cavernous hall could hear his labored breathing. Nothing but a faint whisper of conversation, as if at a funeral, the light still weak and gray and early for the day. Someone would be up to milk cows soon, he thought, distantly and with little clarity.

“Ten succumbed to their wounds.”

There was motion, to the side, and Anders’ eyes flickered over with the barest movement of his neck. It was like a knife in his side to see Varric making his way to the front of the crowd, face twisted in a grimace under the shadow of a few days growth of beard. A tall black haired woman followed close behind, the crowd failing to close on her behind him like a persistent foot in the door. She looked troubled.

The dwarf looked naked without Bianca on his back. He’d never known Varric’s face could hold such sorrow; Not where people could see.

Anders found his voice. Somewhere.

 

“Don’t let him see.”

 

It was hissed, and cracked. But Anders has seen Merrill perk up and swivel her ears from half a block at the sound of her name, smile spreading like a daisy in the sun, and he knew that the Inquisitor’s ears heard it, above the sea of humanity standing around gawking.

Her gaze swiveled to Varric, and something like sympathy softened her gaze.

The dwarf was a friend to anyone who knew him for any amount of time. Anders had found an ear in him, when Varric had managed to get a few cups of ale into the mage under Justice’s watchful gaze, and the dwarf had been witness to many a tearful confession. Been a comforting, rough hand on his shoulder. A warm, rumbling voice of reason, when he felt as if he was losing his Maker damned mind.

Justice betrayed him same as he betrayed Hawke, and Anders didn’t want to cause him any more pain than he already had. Let him die where he couldn’t watch. Let Varric have no other memory but him standing whole in the hall under judgement, and a pillow that was shabby with age and worn by worried fingers.

There was silence, and Anders finally began to feel the strain of the weight of so many Templar’s silences pinning him to the floor, knees bruising and heart staggering under the strain. He didn’t say another thing. 

“You will be imprisoned until the Inquisition has further use of you.” Lavellan finally settled on, after Varric had shouldered his way to the front, and his fists had clenched to rock-like tension at his sides. “As soon as I am able, Justice will stand trial.”

Anders let a flicker of emotion out, uncertain, eyes venturing to meet the Inquisitor’s predatory evaluation.

“The mage known as Anders will stand trial for weakness in the face of possession. The crime of murder, terrorism, and destruction of property will be laid at the feet of the being responsible.”

Her mouth twisted into a snarl, and it was in that moment that Anders remembered that this was no human in front of him. The flash of her pupils were slitted, and her teeth were sharp in her soft red mouth. “You are in our world, with our laws. Justice will be served at the bequest of those who live here, not by some being who knows not what he is meddling with.”

Anders felt a tug like a hook somewhere in his gut and gasped in pain, curling over himself like a reed in a stiff breeze. Justice flared angrily, his eyes and bones grown hot with anger.

( This _mortal_ , daring to claim judgement over right and wrong. When _he_ had ruled the domain for centuries. A _thousand years._ )

 

**_’No mortal will condemn Justice.’_** Came the hammer-like reply, ripping his throat to shreds, and drawing a small murmur of concern from the crowd. The shuffling of feet drew his gaze, and Anders felt hysterical humor at the sight of retreat, not entirely gone behind the wall Justice normally shoved him behind.

_( Perhaps the spirit was too weak.)_

Now, perhaps they understood. Now they feared him.

But fear wasn’t what he received from the porcelain warlord surveying her kingdom.

Her face didn't change. Not a single minute movement of muscle or lip. “ _I_ am judgement in this realm. You chose to come here, and you chose to face mortal law.” The Inquisitor said in a steely tone, her hands clenching into white knuckles as she pushed herself up to stand. (Anders easily resisted the urge to mention Justice’s summons here weren’t entirely intentional. It was beside the point.)

“ _I_ am command, and _I_ am justice. Or is the shell you’re inhabiting the only eyes you will see through? Will you let me show you the lives you ruined? The powder keg you have _ignited?_ injustices that have blossomed under your rebellion?”

 

Lavellan stalked down the stairs so she could crouch down in front of Anders, the smell of spindle weed musty and almost fetid in her robes, the sweet smell of pine in her hair and breath as she leaned in, as gentle as a mother.

There was concerned movement from the soldiers, and the subtle sound of a single plate of chainmail shifting was magnified by a dozen, causing a clatter of metal that punctuated the Inquisitors bended knee.

“ _I_ am Justice, and you,” Her hand caught his chin in callused archers fingers and forced it up, and Anders slowly lost control of himself as Justice spotted his vision with blue.

“Are Vengeance.”

 

#####

 

This dungeon was better.

 

For a certain measure of better. Anything would be better than the heavy crush of dozens of eyes on him.

As two uncomfortable looking Templars dragged him through the dungeon, and Anders saw the lamps flickering against the elegantly hewn stone, his nerveless hands loosened their tight rictus where they’d been clenching the manacles chains. At least there’d be light.

The Templar on his right, the female with her helmet still on and voice echoing uncertainly, coughed.

“Her grace said to put him in block five.”

The one on the left, with his helmet off and mustache bristling indignantly every time he so much as glanced down at Anders, spit off to the side, missing the edge of Anders cloak by an entirely coincidental margin. His hair was short and spiked, as if shorn off with a pair of clippers too dull to do a good job of it.

“Stuff what she said. This piece of druffalo shite’s going in seven.”

Anders didn’t say anything. He’d spent so long imagining the worst happening, that he was simply numb to the reality.

It was like a bad dream, all over again, the hallways receding down, down, down, the torches growing further between, the last reaching strains of daylight making their winter-stained way through the slitted windows before they went too far down even for that.

He used to have nightmares that repeated- Walls closing in. When he was in solitary, he kept dreaming that the door finally opened, light came in, and so did a dozen demons, cackling and wicked with sharp claws.

His face still felt warm from the last glance of sunlight. Anders shut his eyes, the need to see his feet no longer necessary when he was being dragged so closely.

_’Why do you act as if this is your last night?’_ Justice’s voice was sudden, quiet. Or quiet at least, for him. A relief after such a long silence. _’That interloping **woman** , said you will not be harmed.’_

_’Yes. That is what she said.’_ Anders agreed dully. They rounded a corner, and the Left Templar gave a quiet grunt, shoving Anders to the side so he could fumble for his keys, unlocking the cell.

 

It creaked ominously, and although it was far nicer than the Venatori dungeons, the spells inside wafted out like a bad odor, dampeners and enchantments he thought might cut even Justice off.

 

Just another repeat of a very bad dream.

 

“Wait-” He started involuntarily, the sucking void of the cell causing his skin to shiver as if trying to get away. It was a feeling similar to the one he got when facing a Tranquil, or a fancy bit of dwarven craft. It was a room, but a room of such _otherness_ he wanted no part of it.

 

In the venatori dungeon, he simply couldn’t cast. In this, he wasn’t sure he’d even dream.

 

“What- Where did-“

“Like it?” The Templar came close, and Anders drew back in disgust at the lyrium sweet odor of his breath, damp with spittle. “It was here when those knife-ears brought us up the mountain. If we’d had rooms like these,” The Right Templar shifted uncomfortably, coughing again, and Anders irritably and wearily thought if perhaps she’d like him to have a look as a healer, if she kept insisting on coughing like an idiot. “You little skirts wouldn’t have gotten so high and mighty.”

“The Inquisitor knows about this?” Anders gasped, as the Templar grabbed him by the back of the neck and forced him the first few feet into the room. It was like being driven into a room of angry wasps, as thick as fog, and his legs involuntarily braced, stiffening with a sort of quiet controlled distress similar to terror. He felt like a druffalo someone was trying to force backwards.

“She will. And I’m sure she’d approve. Has a fierce disposition, that one. If she weren’t a sodding rabbit-“

“Burgess,” Came the sharp reprimand. “That’s enough. Get him in if you’re going to, or don’t. But I’m not going to stand here all night.” Templar the Right said, and Left kicked the back of his knee hard enough where Anders’ leg crumpled; and he was effectively tossed in.

His hands scraped the ground, and he hadn’t eaten correctly in so long that his weak limbs simply buckled, cracking his face briefly against the stone floor and pinning his hands to his chest.

The visceral and very real sensation of a Templar standing in an open door behind him, and him on the ground helpless, was like a douse of ice water, and Anders scrambled back against the far wall, breathing hard and bleeding from his mouth and chin.  
The door simply shut, a single slit near the top for eyes to see through sending dapples of dim, dim light that were as bright as a handful of fireflies in the oppressive, stinging silence of the room.

No Justice.

No magic. He couldn’t even cast a glimmer.

Anders set his hands in his lap, too dark to see, and drew his knees up to his chest in a mimicry of how they’d found him.

 

And he waited.

 

#####

 

He didn’t have to wait long.

 

Back in the tower, if you’d been bad, if you’d been a trouble maker, or if you’d had what Irving called a ‘fit of high spirits’- Nobody cared what happened to you. Templars could make their… Nightly visits. Check on you. Make sure you weren’t…

 

Acting out.

 

Anders had been lucky enough to warrant Irving’s special attentions, and these special inspections were few and far between.

Despite the fact that every Templar between Lake Calenhad and the White Spire would have liked to put him in his place, he’d barely been touched. A few heart-stopping encounters in the halls, being cornered in the library. His hair being toyed with, arm being grabbed, ties being tugged on-

 

He’d had Irving and Karl to look out for him, then. After that, he had himself. As a Spirit Healer, his reputation had preceded him and it had protected him as well as his confident walk and sarcastic rejoinders.

 

Now, he had no one, and nothing.

 

It could have been hours. He knew they wouldn’t wait long- No one could, with Elthina’s killer simply right down the hall.

He had time to pace the circumference of the cell, hands drawing along the stone, and measuring five paces at each wall. There were probably four. The claustrophobia began to set in, and he started his usual mantra of fine, it’s fine, as he slowly sunk back down at his starting point, hands fisted in their chains and metal weighing heavy on his wrists.

There was no Justice to scoff at his thoughts. To wake him at the brink of sleep with questions about thoughts, and feelings.

He was lonely, all of a sudden.

 

_(Marian used to wake him at night, when he had the usual Warden dreams, with a soft whisper of ’You’re glowing blinky. Go to sleep.’ Soft hands, and her hair brushing his face as she leaned over to smooth her fingers across his chest, calloused by staff-work and smelling of smoke and blood and the liquor she’d drunk with him before they’d tumbled into bed._

_She’d talk to Justice, at night, when he wouldn’t let Anders sleep, long conversations that he wasn’t privy to. But she’d laugh, and tell him her more attentive lover was just fine, thanks for asking._

_That was company he hadn’t had since Karl. He still missed her. He probably would never stop, and it was only now he knew what people meant when they said they had a broken heart._

_It felt like something wrenched loose in his chest, right under his ribs, rattling around in there like a hot coal. And it just kept hurting.)_

 

Falling into sleep was dreamless. Voiceless, and silent. It was like slipping into the earth, the weight of dirt black and heavy and pressing him down until there was nothing but the terrifying jerk of his own limbs as he came awake, hours later, heart hammering and throat clicking drily.

It was the sound of footsteps, heavy and ponderous on stone, that woke him.

Something jangled in the hallway, the creak of armor, and the door clunked as it was opened, casting a thin beam of light onto the wall on Ander’s right.

The wood was old; very, very old. It looked almost fossilized with age, blackened by some long ago fire that only the spirits would know of. Or perhaps by some past imprisoned mage, furious and immolating. He’d ask, if he had any place to reach for the spirits he knew were blindly existing just past his awareness.

As the light from the hall crawled across the stone, and splashed across the floor to meet his bloody toes, he idly thought of who must have been in here last. Elves, possibly. Perhaps Tevinters, or people from across the sea.

It wasn’t Left Templar in the door. Some other, nameless shape outlined in the door, pauldrons hulking and sharp.

It didn’t matter. They were all the same faceless nightmare. They were here either to get their piece of skirt, or to beat the shite out of him. A broken face and arms would go a long way to soothing someone’s high emotions about the chantry.

There was silence. Nothing but a slightly wet, heavy breathing echoing in the confines of the Templar’s helmet.

It was silent long enough for Anders to notice how numb his legs were, how sore his wrists were, how hungry he was. The last thing he’d eaten had been the night before, when the Inquisition Soldiers had stopped for the night and they’d given him some cold stew left in the bottom of the pot. His stomach yawned emptily as the torches flickered across the wall, but there was still weight enough in it to swoop as the door slowly shut.

With the templar inside.

“Here to keep me company?”

His voice was raspy, cracked with disuse. The templar didn’t answer.

The halberd was gone, and Anders was grateful. If there was one thing he didn’t want, it was the eye of the chantry staring at him. Not now. Not particularly _ever._

There was a hiss like the rush of blood in his ears, so monotonous as to be soundless, and he thought it might have been Justice, roaring from a very long distance. It wasn’t as relieving as he thought it would be. If he was honest, these past couple weeks with Justice almost completely muzzled and silent made him… Lonely. Scared.

The templar moved across the room, and they removed their sword as they went, leaning it against the wall. His breathing got slightly faster, the smallest unnoticeable hitch that Anders probably only detected with a Healer’s ears.  
Anyone else might have thought the figure stone, emotionless.

Instead, he shuddered and shrank away, the wet clammy possessiveness rolling off in waves repulsing him as effectively as a horrible stench. He didn’t need magic to see what this man- And he was almost completely positive it was a man- intended.

Anders evaded the first grasp, crabbing sideways with an almost animal snarl, and kicking out. The templar grunted, faltering a moment as Anders sore ruined feet skidded off of his greaves and tripped him up temporarily.

_’He didn’t lock the door.’_

It could have been Justice, so quiet as to be indiscernible from his own racing panicked thoughts. It could have been Karl, quiet and observant.

Or it could have been his own sharp-eyed observation, decades of escapism and the slightest moment of opportunity like a blaring beacon.

_(For years after he escaped to the Wardens, he’d slept with his door wide open, too scared to shut it for fear of someone locking him in. He’d always know where the exits were, the closest windows, the fastest route to open air and clear blue sky.)_

Sharp gauntlets hooked his foot and dragged him back.

His nails scrabbled uselessly against the stone, and with a defeated snarl, he twisted around, and landed a sharp elbow right in the man's helmet. It knocked sideways, and the man let out a blue streak of swears as he used his knees to pin Anders arms down, and used one of his hands to wrench the winged helmet off of his head.

He still didn’t speak, but Anders found that in these situations most Templars didn’t. That would imply that the person they were hurting required some kind of explanation, or discourse.

_Just a thing._

He heaved against the weight pinning him down as the man’s free hand found his throat. Anders’ knees did nothing against the armored back, and as tired and weak as he was he couldn’t do much else to prevent the Templar from hauling a hand back and backhanding him across the mouth.

Stars sparked across his vision, and his ears rang.

The Templar exhaled heavily, as if Anders was being difficult, and he felt the painful rasp of stone against his cheek as the grip and weight on his throat tightened and jammed his face sideways. Something wet and panting laved across his neck, down to his chest, and cold air caused him to shudder when his robe was ripped, almost crushing his shoulder from the pressure of it snapping.

It was odd, how he snarled and snapped, and without Justice, he just. Went still.

There was a noise outside, as heavy sharp hands groped down his chest, one heavily armored poleyn crushing his knee and possibly tearing it open as the man kicked his knees aside to rest between his legs.

Another noise, louder, and now Anders knew for a fact the door hadn’t been locked, because it burst open with a noise like a small explosion, so loud and sudden that the man jerked briefly back. Anders took a grateful rasp of air that sounded suspiciously like a sob, completely dry and shaking.

The air between them was sour with fear and anger, and uncertainty as Ander’s wavering and panicked vision narrowed onto the very, _very_ still shape of a second templar in the doorway.

The rest of the distance between them was given when the second templar who entered crossed the cell in three long angry strides, drew a leg back, and smashed the bastards face in with one swift kick that connected nose with greave like he was winning gold for it.

 

Blood sprayed across Anders face, and he didn’t blink.

 

The second templar rounded on Anders where he was on the ground as soon as the sound of cracking bone ceased echoing, and asked something in concern that he didn’t quite hear.

His heart was fluttering birdlike under his chest too loudly, and face was wet with a combination of involuntary tears and blood. It blurred his vision, but didn’t stop the figure from being familiar; broad shouldered and bearing Kirkwall chantry’s distinctive red and yellow accented armor.

_( It drew Cullen to his mind for a moment, fresh in his memories from glimpsing him in the great hall.)_

The familiar templar’s not alone either.

“The inside is like a river, noiseless and fast. He doesn’t think he’s going to be able to stop.” A quiet, whispering voice close to his ear said, and Anders jerked sideways in surprise and hysterical bewilderment.

A soft, spider-like hand came to grab his elbow, and drew him towards the door, gentle as a farmer leading a lamb. Anders dug his heels in, halfway up from the ground and mouth working soundlessly.

The young man at the other end of the grip was pale, deathly pale, with wisps of straw-like hair underneath a yawning hat and eyes like panes of glass. He was almost as tall as Anders himself, but hunched, anxious, eyes darting to look at things like the feathers molting gently off of his shoulders, or the rivulet of blood dripping down his neck. They zeroed in and drifted off again, as if unable to stick.

The wound on his mouth had opened again. Coppery.

“I’m sorry," His voice was slow, concerned, as if unaware of the brutality almost drowning out his quiet voice not five strides away. "I don’t think about things either. Dangerous like spines, underneath soft blankets. It tangles you up.”

“Wh-What are you saying-“

A noise like someone hammering meat, and air being blown through a wet tube came from behind him, and Anders turned to look, feeling strangely disconnected.

Shocked. He wasn’t sure what he was more in shock of- The fear, or the fact that someone cared enough to- To come.

He was shocked even more when he recognized ink black hair, a familiar set of sky blue eyes frozen in winter and a set to the mouth like that of a murderer.  
His rescuers helmet was spinning idly on the floor where he’d wrenched it off and thrown it.

Carver Hawke drew a gauntleted fist back, and it came down again, driving spit and blood from the Templars mouth, along with a tooth small and white that clattered across the floor with the sound of something priceless. It drew back, and down again, like a chore, like something inexorable.

The man underneath him, in a sick parody of the moment before, put his hands up as if to block the blows, a garbled noise coming from his mouth like words.

But Carver Hawke hit him again.

And again.

And again.

“Carver.”

No reply. Another wet sucking noise, and this time Anders is sure he heard the sharp crack of something breaking. Whether it was Hawke’s hand or the Templar’s face, he couldn’t tell. Not with his magic trapped behind the metal fetters on his wrists.

“He deserves this. He left you all standing in the wreckage, and she was beautiful even with the sorrow in her eyes, the fires behind her- His Captain needed him. More than she did.“ Soft fingers still gripping his sleeve, more like they forgot the were holding on than they were keeping him anywhere. Otherwise Anders doesn't think he would stand for it.

He ignored the voice at his side, and pulled towards Carver, a lump in his throat growing thorns that choked him. _“Carver.”_

Nothing, except for a short, sharp guttural sound that could have come from the man being beaten to death, or from Carver Hawke, tears glinting faintly on his cheeks in the light coming around Anders and his pale haired companion.

_“Hawke!”_

Finally, eyes flickered up, and surprise showed.

 

The last remaining Hawke stopped, unsure, blood and gore dripping down from his hands.

 

He wasn’t out of breath. His chest moved in short, sharp steady bursts, like someone who had been running steadily for a long distance. His eyes flickered down to the figure underneath him, and then back to Anders.

Carver’s eyes narrowed, and he got up heavily. The armor creaked, and Anders tried not to flinch away at the sound, strangely shakey. His whole skin felt bruised, raw. He reached up with a shaking hand and drew his robe back over his shoulder, eyes cast down now that he was faced with-

 

He looked so much like Marian.

 

Not in the face, or in his shape. He was much bigger, wider, built like some Orlesian caricature of a Ferelden, lacking only the giant bristly beard and the dog at his side. There was one on his arse, if Isabela’s ecstatic retellings of a Wounded Coast bath in a river were to be believed.

But his eyes were the same shape, an exact replica in blue rather than the raptor-like yellow of Marian’s, so evaluating, so cutting. Not nearly as dull as people led him to believe.

“Thank you. Cole,” Carver’s breath began to slow, calmer. (His voice was deeper than Anders remembered, jaw more shadowed.)

The man bleeding gently behind him didn’t move, not even a motion in his chest. But with the door open, and a small tendril of the Fade reconnecting with his consciousness like water soaking into desert sand, he could sense the small bit of life force still burning away. Guttering, but still there. “You can go now.”

 

The young man let go of Anders arm, giving it a nervous, hesitant pat, as if he wasn’t used to it, and a gap toothed smile that looked like he was copying it from something he’d seen in a book.

It was both endearing, and mildly disturbing.

 

And then, they were alone.

 

Carver looked down at his fist, frowning. “I,” He swallowed. In the dim lighting he looked deathly ill. As if he hadn’t been sleeping, bruises underneath his eyes a violent purple. “I thought you’d been killed.”

Anders didn’t say anything. Some, small part that wasn’t the slowly growing louder voice of Justice was telling him it was simply a dream. Being locked up this final time finally caused him to snap.

 

At least he wouldn’t be lonely, if he _was_ insane.

 

“I hoped I would be.” Might as well talk to a dream.

 

Carver’s face crumpled. Wet tears leaked out, angry and small.

 

He’d only seen the younger Hawke in true tears a few times before. When they were drinking, and things took a turn for the maudlin.

When his mother had died. A dark week, where the Hawke clan had closed ranks for close to a month and they hadn’t seen hide or hair from either of them, or Bodahn and Oranna.

Once, they’d seen a pair of twins in Lowtown while they were searching for a dwarven contact, and Hawke had had to sit him down on some dirty muddy stoop to gather himself, his head resting on her shoulder and eyes shut tight.

Nobody had said anything, but this was before they’d known about the second littlest Hawke. The one that hadn’t made it to their shores.

 

These were different. These were the tired and helpless tears of someone who had lost everything.

_(It was the news of Marian’s death that had brought Anders this far when nothing else would, and perhaps it was the same thing that drew Carver here.) ___

__

__Without being sure, he ventured a hand out, half expecting it to go through the illusion._ _

__It met solid breastplate._ _

__In a flurry of motion Anders was caught up in a tight grip- And for a heart stopping moment he struggled, feet and hands scrabbling uselessly, until he realized Carver wasn’t trying to hurt him. Was simply holding him tight._ _

__Anders was almost of height with him, coming short by perhaps four inches of the top of Hawke’s head, and he knew the height wasn’t all armor. His nose was almost in Carver’s neck, and the smell of sleepless nights and sweating fear met his nose, overlaid with the sick smell of someone languishing. The sweet smell of lyrium._ _

__It wasn’t even a hug, not really, so much as a death grip; fingers digging in painfully. As if he couldn’t let go. Didn’t want to, even._ _

__Anders struggled to breath, and not because of the pressure of arms around his shoulders. His vision is still blurred, but he wasn’t quite so numb now.  
“You’re the last fucking family I have left,” Came the dangerous, soft sigh into his ear, and Anders could feel the slow drip of tears onto his bare shoulder. “She loved you, and you’re all that I have left.”_ _

__His heart broke in two, if it hadn’t been shattered before, and Anders brought his hand up to clutch at Carver’s armor. His fingers met the pits and whorls of long days on the road, the rough scabbing of wear and tear in the metal, and he thought of how this one man made it all the way here, just to be there to-_ _

__

__Not save him. There’s no saving him. There’s no Anders or Justice now, no-one to save or to save from._ _

__

__But his back creaked under the pressure of someone caring, and even as he listened to the sound of pounding footsteps and a strident, furious elvhen voice-_ _

__

__Anders felt safe._ _

**Author's Note:**

> My rare-pair otp. 
> 
> My characterization of Anders is probably different from other peoples. In my head, he probably feels very very guilty taking any undeserving life, as well as indirectly being the cause of death of Marian. Who was, even at the end, the love of his life. She wanted to free the mages. And even though I completely agree with what Anders did, it might not be so easy to justify to yourself when you're lying awake at night. If anyone wants to talk about it, hit up my tumblr. clandestineclairvoyant
> 
> And my Carver Hawke is kind of fucked up. And a Seeker as of this work, but like I said. That's going to be something in between. Involving more Cole.
> 
> If I handled anything ham-handedly it's just my shitty writing. But this story wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it. :'(


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